I bought my desktop 3 years ago. My intent with what I bought was to get though college without having to upgrade. With that in mind, I bought a CPU near the top of the curve. I got an Athlon XP soonish after they came out, at got a 1700+ when the fastest one was 1800+.
Buying the fastest of anything is not cost efficient. If you look at the prices, there is a definite curve to them, with the newest thing sharply more expensive. The Athlon 64s are now coming down far enough on that for me to consider one, if I were building now. That said, I think it will be 4 years before you have programs that will take advantage of that chip. Linux zealots go away, Ryan is not going to run Linux. Save the money and get ~3000+ Athlon XP with a nicely equipped mobo like the
Soyo KT600 Dragon Ultra. Build from there. Get at least a stick of 512 ram. Don't get the latest generation of video card, buy one that is a step down-the price savings are amazing. Look for a good hard drive deal at Best buy/Comp USA/whatever, and get a SATA (Serial ATA) drive. Start figuring cost per meg, and that will allow you to better compare. SATA is faster then ATA, and with disk sizes going so high now, a very good thing to have.
Make your budget. From there pick a motherboard. Then build out. If you have money left over, add some RAM or up the video card. Or just come in under budget.
Wetzel